Nassau OTB closes on roman catholic easter Sunday in preference to Greek orthodox Easter Sunday. 300,000,000 believers can go to hellbut the holy one Andrew cuomo will kill them to keep them out of Nassau OTB on the holy day of Andrew cuomo, the great, mighty and exalted one
Who tells new York when it is Easter Sunday.
In Andrew cuomo we trust not!
CEDARTOWN, Ga. — The chief deputy to Sheriff Johnny Moats of Polk County appeared in an office doorway one morning this month with a message he knew would delight his boss: Another Georgia lawman had heeded Sheriff Moats’s suggestion to add “In God We Trust” decals to official vehicles.
It was a small part of what has emerged as a big moment for the national motto, which has long been cherished by many Christians, criticized by those who say it infringes on the separation of church and state, overlooked by plenty and safeguarded by courts. In recent months, dozens of Southern and Midwestern law enforcement agencies have added the axiom to squad cars, usually to the vexation of vocal, often distant critics, and at the personal expense of sheriffs, police chiefs or rank-and-file employees.
“If it’s on my money and it’s on the state flag, I can put it on a patrol car,” said Sheriff Moats, who wrote to Georgia’s sheriffs this year to promote the motto’s placement on law enforcement vehicles. “Just about every single day, I have another sheriff calling and saying, ‘I’ve done it’ or ‘Can you send me a picture of your patrol car?’ ”
Some officials contend that their display of the motto is elementary patriotism, a four-word way of “standing up for America, standing up for our country,” Sheriff Moats said. Others in law enforcement say the stickers are a response to the battering their profession’s reputation has taken after more than a year of high-profile killings and extraordinary scrutiny.
“With the dark cloud that law enforcement has been under recently, I think that we need to have a human persona on law enforcement,” said Sheriff Brian Duke of Henderson County, Tenn. “It gave us an opportunity to put something on our cars that said: ‘We are you. We’re not the big, bad police.’ ”
But critics worry that displays of “In God We Trust” on taxpayer-funded vehicles cross the threshold of constitutionality, even though the courts have repeatedly brushed aside challenges to the motto, which Congress enshrined in 1956. Explanations like the one Sheriff Duke offered have not curbed those frustrations.
“This motto has nothing to do with the problem of police forces’ shooting people, but it’s a great way to divert attention away from that and wrap yourself in a mantle of piety so that you’re above criticism,” said Annie Laurie Gaylor, a co-president of theFreedom From Religion Foundation, a Wisconsin-based group that has demanded that law enforcement officials stop exhibiting the motto. “The idea of aligning the police force with God is kind of scary. That’s the first thing you’d expect to see in a theocracy.”
A pattern has developed: A police or sheriff’s department begins using the stickers, and Ms. Gaylor’s group sends it a letter, arguing that the practice is unconstitutional and that the agency should desist. The dispute attracts attention, and more law enforcement agencies join the trend; indeed, some appear to relish the opportunity to tweak a critic.
In Texas, for instance, the police chief of Childress, Adrian Garcia, drew attention when he denied Ms. Gaylor’s request and, in a letter to her postedon the department’s Facebook page, asked “that you and the Freedom From Religion Foundation go fly a kite.”
Ms. Gaylor disputed suggestions that the foundation had unwittingly fostered the spread of the stickers. “I don’t think it has a thing to do with us,” she said.
Protests and warnings from critics like Ms. Gaylor also seem to be of little concern in places like Polk County, a few minutes from the Alabama border, where about 41,000 people live in a rural area dotted with churches, Confederate battle flags and fried chicken restaurants. The small atrium of Sheriff Moats’s building features a pair of murals painted by inmates, including one of the Ten Commandments on tablets that are more than six cinder blocks tall. A painted golden banner reading “In God We Trust” hangs above them.
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